Never again?

In what he deemed a perversion of the Hippocratic Oath by which doctors pledge to put the health of their patients’ first, doctors in Nazi Germany believed they were caring for the health of the nation – even mankind – by taking part in the Holocaust.

But it is particularly important for physicians to be aware of how easy it is to be socialized toward evil, toward becoming willing participants in a process of destruction.

I’ll let readers come to their own conclusions on what lessons to glean from these citations.

______________________________

Tanya sees many parallels like this since yesterday. I can’t even count how many times I’ve heard that 100 years ago in the US, a black man wasn’t even recognized as a person.

______________________________

Rebecca adds: The very first group slated for death in Nazi Germany were the chronically ill and the disabled, under the T-4 programme, after the address of the hospital where the killing were first carried out. The doctors who did the deed sincerely believed that they were ending intolerable suffering for incurable patients, who were otherwise condemned to “life not worth living,” and that by euthanising the sickest patients, they were freeing up scarce resources in an overburdened healthcare system. Any Canadian who doesn’t feel a slight chill down his spine at that hasn’t been paying much attention lately.

Related Posts

Currently you have JavaScript disabled. In order to post comments, please make sure JavaScript and Cookies are enabled, and reload the page.Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser.